Dunwoody Pavement Paradox

If you're trying to figure out a simple answer to all things asphalt in Dunwoody then you're probably dizzy from all the spin. The problem is there is more than one distorted looking glass in this fun house. You cannot just follow the money and you cannot just look for the busy body who wants to run your life. You must consider both.

Take the interstate lane to be paved through old growth forest. Done deal. Chamois chafing bikers are hell bent on creating a Dunwoody just like Seattle or wherever the hell bicycle nirvana really is (and belongs). But they are "progressives" and that makes them right and you wrong. Just ask 'em.

Another on the special interest front is the High School Roundabout. Roundabouts are currently very trendy with the aforementioned "progressive" crowd. Just gotta have 'em, after all they are so euro-chic. Can't wait until they find out how euro-chic castles are. Real castles, not those shoddily constructed mcmansions. Anyway they attempted to validate their plan by hiring a consultant who never did a site visit and didn't even know about the high school. Little Fuqui Yuppee. Then the Not Around My Place folks pounced and shouted in Council's ear and like a wind-sock Council blew the NAMP's direction. Score one for the "interlacers".

Council were not listening so intently when the anti-parkway crowd tried to bend their ears. The plan is simple enough: spend two point four million dollars on zero point four miles of road. That works out to over eleven hundred dollars per running foot, not the kind of money that falls off trees. This plan includes de-paving--sacrificing one lane each way for sidewalks and bikeways so one might conclude the progressive bikers have won another battle. Naturally the interlacers came out in force, stealing a progressive mainstay, "save the trees", in an effort to stop the plan. But this is a case of follow the money, and the money is a grant that we've asked for and received and should we turn up our non-progressive noses, we'll not see another grant for quite some time. And we're addicted to OPM.

There's also the one point five million dollars pissed away on a building now left to rot. Why? Well, the official answer is this property is a necessary component of a cut-through from Shallowford over to Perimeter/Ashford-Dunwoody. In reality this is a bit of both follow the money and "we'll run your lives". You see the real goal was to acquire the old Shallowford/Emory hospital property allowing for an extension of the interstate lane through Brookrun and preventing the construction of those nasty ole apartments with those nasty ole people living in them. Just so happens that Peachford property was owned by the same folks and they wanted to unload all of them. If you think those deals were unrelated you're too stupid for this smart city.